Wednesday, March 13, 2013

As some of you already know, my life has been a bit hectic lately (moving a few hours south and trying to wrap up writing the Suicide Kings book, among other things) so that's why there hasn't been a new blog post here in a while. Regardless, I'm happy to offer you something brand new and unique today, a special guest post from Andras Jones. You see, while talking to Andras about Suicide Kings and Kubrick and whatever else we were yapping about, we started talking about a strange little feature of Kubrick release dates. In the book I'm documenting 3 Kubrick movies whose releases coincided with King-Kills (DrStrangelove=JFK, 2001:ASO=MLK, EyesWideShut=JFKjr). When I told this to Andras, he started to wonder what else happened on the days that Kubrick films came out. A damn good question, and the man has done some damn good digging to find out. I'm presenting this material as Andras wrote it, and have only tossed in a few notes and additions in green text.

We will be discussing this list and many tangents (to be sure) on tomorrow's Always Record with Bill Klaus, David Plate, Andras Jones, John Fell Ryan, Mark LeClair and myself.

I want to thank Andras for presenting this idea because, among other fascinating tidbits, I think it offers us a new way to compare the films. Bill Klaus has of course created the "Kubrick Transformer" and I posited the movie poster angle on the Mask of God blog. But, with Andras' info, we can now take two films that had similar events coinciding with their releases (such as the films with Yankees/RedSox games), and ponder what that tells us about the way the two movies sync.Here we go:

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History in Kubrick

By Andras Jones

In a conversation with Alan Abbadessa-Green, regarding the deaths and assassinations associated with the release dates of certain Stanley Kubrick films (a subject Alan explores in his book "Suicide Kings") it struck me that looking into the release dates for all of Kubrick’s films might reveal more interesting data. It does.

Just a few things before I give you the facts…

First, I explored these dates with simple Google and Wiki searches. It is by no means comprehensive and I invite others to add to it.

Second, I was struck by the way Kubrick’s earliest films, the ones he had the least control over (in terms of scheduling) had the most exciting syncs. Of course, it is possible that not enough history has accrued around the latter dates, and we may only be aware of the synchronistic resonance of June 26, 1987 (Full Metal Jacket) in a few decades.

What’s pretty clear as we view these dates is a strong correlation between Kubrick and rockets (missiles & spaceships) and the visual mediums (TV, satellites, celebrity) as well as strains of the Kennedy assassination, natural disasters, the twin Holocausts (US & Germany) and the Yankees v. Red Sox rivalry in baseball.

What is most interesting about this list is its apparent lack of intentionality. If we rule out a conspiracy on the part of the author as a factor here, we can simply take measure of the historic barnacles that attach themselves to the hull of a great artist’s vessel as it passes through consciousness. And just because we’ve taken the author’s intention out of the equation doesn’t mean our exploration won’t reveal something unique about the artist. In fact, I think we can learn just as much from the unintended consequences of Kubrick’s (or any artist’s work) as we can from knowing what they were trying to do. Of course, Kubrick, because of his longevity, the multi-leveled complexity of his films, and the amount of control he was able to exert over his productions, lends himself particularly well to this kind of exploration.

That said, and with all due respect to Mr. Kubrick, I see this list as an exquisite demonstration of the authorship of sync expressing itself through the constellation of action, documentation, time and the synchromystic witness (that’s us).

We begin with Kubrick’s first film, a documentary called “Day of The Fight”.

IMDB-description:“Based on Kubrick's pictorial for Look Magazine (January 18, 1949*) entitled "Prizefighter," "Day Of The Fight" tells of a day in the life of a middleweight Irish boxer named Walter Cartier, particularly the day of his bout with black middleweight Bobby James. This 16-minute short opens with a short (about 4 minutes) study of boxing's history, narrated by veteran newscaster Douglas Edwards in a no-nonsense, noir tone of voice. After this, we follow Walter (and his twin brother Vincent) through his day as he prepares for his 10:00 P.M. bout. After eating breakfast, going to early mass and eating lunch, he starts arranging his things for the fight at 4:00 P.M. By 8:00, he is waiting in his dressing room, where he undergoes a mental transformation, turning into the fighting machine the crowd clamors for. At 10:00, he faces James, and soon, he comes out victorious in a short match which was filmed live on April 17th, 1950**.”

** April 17, 1950 - (The day, “Day of The Fight” was shot ) Soviet Union Shoots Down US Plane: America accuses the “Reds” of shooting down a US Plane over the Baltic Sea in an unprovoked attack.﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿﻿

- In “Operation Red Wing” (shot Cherokee) US detonates hydrogen bomb over Bikini Atoll. This successful test indicated that hydrogen bombs were viable airborne weapons and that the arms race had taken another giant leap forward.

- Lee Harvey Oswald returns to the US with his wife and daughter on the U.S. Maasdam after 2 years in the USSR. The family was greeted by Mr. Spas T. Rankin

- Just five weeks after pitching a no-hitter against the Baltimore Orioles in the fourth game of his pro career, LA Angels rookie pitcher Robert “Bo” Belinskey gets busted for assaulting a nightclub attendant during a night of carousing with Eddie Fisher, Dean Martin & Henry Fonda.

On Nov. 22, 1963, Stanley Kubrick was supposed to present his new film, Dr. Strangelove, Or: How I Learned To Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, to the press. Shortly before the screening, word arrived that President Kennedy had been assassinated that day. The screening was canceled and, because the film treats a U.S. President character with less than the utmost respect, changes were made before the film’s release. The character of Major Kong had a line describing how “a fella could have a pretty good weekend in Dallas”—but because the President had been killed in Dallas, the line was changed to “in Vegas.” A pie-throwing sequence that Kubrick found too silly was also cut; it would have included the line “our beloved President has been struck down in his prime.” The film’s planned London premiere, scheduled for Dec. 12 that year, was also cancelled. Dr. Strangelove eventually opened in the U.S. on Jan. 29, 1964.

- Commercial satellite, Intelstat IV (F3), is launched. From Wikipedia regarding Intelstat: The network in its early years was not as robust as it is now. A failure of the Atlantic satellite in the spring of 1969[when?] threatened to stop the Apollo 11 mission; a replacement satellite went into a bad orbit and could not be recovered in time; NASA had to resort to using undersea cable telephone circuits to bring Apollo's communications to NASA during the mission.Fortunately, during the Apollo 11 moonwalk, the moon was over the Pacific Ocean, and so other antennas were used, as well as INTELSAT III, which was in geostationary orbit of the Pacific.

16 comments:

Re;" That said, and with all due respect to Mr. Kubrick, I see this list as an exquisite demonstration of the authorship of sync expressing itself through the constellation of action, documentation, time and the synchromystic witness (that’s us)."

I think sync is way more complex then we give it credit for,take a look at my latest post on the name Coleman and all of the weirdness surrounding it -

http://brizdazz.blogspot.com.au/2013/03/another-coleman-sync.html

You just can't make this stuff up,it's mind-blowing how these coincidences unfold in time.

I went and checked this date and to my surprise Vincent van der Voort (born 18 December 1975 in Purmerend, Netherlands) a dart player I saw play against the Irish rogue Brendan Dolan for my first taste of professional darts after writing a post about dartboards in movies (especially "The Shining") here -

http://brizdazz.blogspot.com.au/2012/10/flipside-of-dartboard.html

was initially inspired because I had watched Andras in "Nightmare 4" and noticed the dartboard connections in that movie,especially the red and green of the dartboard -

December 18, 1975George and Kathleen Lutz moved into a new house at 112 Ocean Avenue in Amityville, New York, along with their three children. Four weeks later, they would flee the house, claiming that it was haunted. They would tell their story to Jay Anson, who wrote it up as the bestselling book The Amityville Horror, which was would later be made into two films

There's a couple of good Kubrick mentions (regarding his links to the Moon Landings and the link between 'Eyes Wide Shut' and Polanski's 'Ninth Gate') in 'Y Magazine II', that is published by a strange occult group in North Wales. You can download YM II free here: http://www.okok.org.uk/Releases/releasespage.htm#2

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